Pain
by Fayalargo Winterwoelfin
Summary: Running had always helped Akira. So, when someone precious to him had died, he ended up running to his rival's house, seeking solace. But since Hikaru reacted strangely to the news, Akira suddenly finds some more disturbant news following. [complete]
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own it.

**Spoiler**: From Vol. 14 of the manga on.

* * *

Chapter 1/2

**Pain**

"Touya Akira - sensei?" The police officer asked politely with a grave expression on his face.

"Yes?" Akira stepped aside to allow the handsome, uniform-clad person into the house. He was feeling a vague unease at the sudden and unexpected visit, especially since there was nothing he had done wrong.

A small crowd of scorpions appeared in his stomach as he closed the door behind the policeman who was taking off his cap and awkwardly brushed some snowflakes from it. For some moments, when the man didn't say anything, Akira carefully, apprehensively studied his face, his mind racing, searching for reason of this disturbing appearance. For some reason, Akira couldn't put his finger on it – was it the man's posture, his tone or his visible unease? – the visitor's oppressing presence dramatically increased the number scorpions assembling in his stomach. Suddenly they were emerging from the pits of his belly in thousands, crawling into his stomach, one tumbling over the other, each of them on the hunt, their stings poised to strike - only the prey had yet to be found.

And suddenly, Akira felt that something was very, very wrong.

As the policemen opened his mouth, Akira's heart stopped for a moment and time stood still as the scorpions in a concerted movement tore back their stings, ready to strike. Akira saw the lips of the man move and the scorpion's stings approached.

They hit hard.

As soon as he realised what the policeman's words had meant, hot pain rushed through his body.

No, he thought in denial, Seiji Ogata, his friend, could never…

Suddenly, Akira's time rushed forward like a torrential river, himself not being able to withstand it. He was washed away… time washed him away in a future where all normality and sanity dissolved in the raging waters.

As the policeman went on talking, nervously, yet earnestly presenting his condolences, Akira's world slowly changed. He was no longer in the water, he only heard the roaring stream passing by his ears, deafening him, but not being able to drown out the man's words. He slowly turned into chalk, before proceeding to become hard, grey stone.

He stood petrified, thankfully aware that he couldn't faint or fall down in shock, because stone statues didn't topple. Absent-mindedly, he wondered, how he then was able to calmly nod in response to the policeman's words and give him the desired answers. He didn't break down in tears and he even thanked the policeman politely for his concern and the innocently white letter that now rested in his hands.

Some hours passed unknown until reality finally kicked in through Akira's numbness.

The telephone rang. Automatically Akira took up the receiver and wondered slightly that his voice sounded almost as normal as ever.

"Touya-Akira speaking."

He knew the teary voice well that resounded out of the receiver. "Akira-kun… I just heard that… and I… it's so tragic… do you need me, shall I come by? You must be feeling terrible… and your parents aren't…"

Ichikawa, the receptionist of his go salon, was as nice and as helpful as ever, trying to take care of him. But right row, he didn't feel he could bear any company.

His own voice was sober and cool, the exact contrast to Ichikawa's as he answered. "I'm well, Ichikawa-san. You don't need to worry about me."

"But… but… Ogata-san… Ogata-san is…" The receptionist of the Go salon sobbed. Before she could finish her sentence though, the connection broke. In wonder Akira looked at his hand that had pushed the receiver on the telephone in such a fierce gesture. He found his feelings remounting through his numbness and subsequently understood his own desperate need to end the conversation. He had needed to kill that voice that had been about to speak aloud what Akira couldn't bear to hear.

When half an hour later the telephone rang again it was a different voice but with the same concern. Again Akira simply broke the connection, but he was no longer able to disregard the truth.

Akira crouched down on the floor, his whole body shaking violently, yet it was nothing compared to the tremor in his soul.

And suddenly he knew he was completely alone. All alone.

The house was empty, save of him. A big, hollow house. One of the entities usually occupying it had just been forcefully torn out of reality. Yes, Akira definitely felt the hole the loss of a soul had left in the house. A big, huge, gigantic empty space that would never be alive again.

With a desperate, piercing cry Akira started up, his eyes pressed together in a futile attempt to not see the huge, black monster approaching the house, battering his claws into the damageable wood and rice-paper organism. And tearing the piece out and devouring it with its sharp-toothed mouth.

Akira ran. Akira fled. As far as he could, he stormed out of the door onto the streets. Only as he had brought a safety distance between him and the monster, he dared to turn around and look back.

There was no monster.

The house looked as elegant, as calm and as beautiful as ever.

And then Akira understood.

There wouldn't be an irreparable hole in the house.

It was in his soul where the hole would forever be.

Before he started shaking again, Akira ran. Running had always helped when something had disturbed him. When he had been beaten for the first time by a boy his own age he had run after him, trying to catch up. When suddenly then his valuable first rival had turned into the most beating letdown, he had run forward. As the rival suddenly learned to play Go again, he ran away.

Insofar it only seemed logical that when he ran, today, he would end up at his rival's house.

* * *

"Ogata-sensei is… _dead_?" Shindo's voice ended in an incredulous, high stutter. His eyes were wide open in shock, staring at Akira, as if he couldn't comprehend what his rival had been telling him. "But…but… how? Why?" Shindo's voice wavered dangerously as if slipping on a skating rink. "An accident? Murder?" 

Akira stemmed his clenched fists against his knees, pressing them into the carpet that covered the floor in Shindo's room, his spine arching backwards and his head tipping forward.

With eyelids pressed together and through clenched teeth Akira whispered that one word he with his entire being wished didn't exist.

"Suicide…?" Hikaru echoed in a shocked yell that bit in Akira's ears. "No! That's not possible!" The denial in Hikaru's voice sounded too hopeful to be believable, "You're joking, right? Right, Akira?"

"No, I'm not!" Akira cried facing Hikaru for the first time eye to eye. From his sharp movement his hair swished furiously around his face, as helpless as he was.

Shindo was very, very quiet for a moment and the stillness in the room pooled around Akira like a night-black lake and everything he felt, everyone he knew speedily glided away from him, while he was unable to move.

Seiji Ogata's face flashed up in his mind, his sharp, amber eyes glittering in merry of some silly joke between them and an honest smile, one of those rare kinds he only shared with Akira and a few others, graced his handsome features.

Akira thumped his fist in a sudden movement on the floor, not caring about the noise it made.

"Damn him! Some things are not supposed to happen…" Akira felt his throat drying and his words were hard to strangle out. "Shindo…" Akira bit on his lip as his eyes fixed on Hikaru. "Some things shouldn't be allowed to happen, should they? Shindo!" Finally he felt his windpipe clenching and for the first time there were tears welling up in his eyes. "Parents and best friends belong to the persons that aren't supposed to die!" Akira almost shouted, before the water in his eyes was blurring his view and his breath was coming in short, pressed hiccups.

He felt so very alone, his parents were away, and Ogata… Ogata… Ogata was…

"How could he go away?" Akira yelled with breaking voice, before he buried his face in his hands. "I have known him all my life! He… he was like a father or a big brother to me… and… at the same time… my friend." Akira's fingers clenched around some strands of hair. "That's not fair!"

Suddenly there was a soft touch on Akira shoulder and a gentle pull on his body, which he unthinkingly followed. He ended up in an embrace of the other's timid arms. The soft warm flesh around his distracted him for a moment from his grief and a gentle hand caressed his tense back in a comforting movement. Desperately, Akira threw his arms around the other's torso and clutched to him fiercely, hoping he had finally found a saving stone in the black lake.

After a seemingly long time, when he had finally calmed down, his face buried in the other's chest, he felt the body supporting him shaking as well.

"No… it's not fair…" Hikaru whispered as Akira worriedly unclenched his arms from the other's torso, straightening up, which caused an unexpected response from the blonde boy. The caresses on Akira's back ended, because Shindo's arms suddenly wandered around his body and he felt the other's clutching to him with the same fierce neediness as himself beforehand had done.

Unthinkingly Akira let him do so, because even through his own grief he had heard the choked tone in the other's voice. It had been so thick with anguish that Akira couldn't help but turning his head towards him.

After seeing his face he sat completely still.

"How…?" he whispered, shocked away from his grief, because he had found the other's face caught in a tight grimace. If it had been a mask of pain it would have suited himself like a second skin.

"How…?" Akira asked again, not ready to believe what his intuition told him, "I barely understand what I'm feeling myself, then how… how can you?" with every word the tone in Akira's voice became more desperate.

Hikaru's voice was barely audible as he whispered with his face against Akira's chest. "How could I _not_ understand you?" His eyes closed in pain as he said what Akira had spoken before. "Some things are not supposed to happen… oh, how much I know it…" Akira winced and buried his face in Hikaru's hair when upon hearing his own words repeated, he felt the anguish mounting in him renewed. "Parents and friends are not supposed to die…" Hikaru stopped to draw a shaking breath. "I know exactly how you feel… because…" a sob interrupted his words. "They… are… not supposed… to disappear… from… this… world…"

* * *

"I have to tell you something." Hikaru said after a long silence. 

Akira's grief no longer felt like blinding white needles, jutting out from his heart in all directions like needles from a pincushion, but it had been diminished to silent thumps, a dark-brown desperation heaving down through his veins with every heartbeat.

"Ah?" They lay on their backs in Hikaru's bed, staring at the silent ceiling. Night had already fallen over the city and only the streets lamps cast their weak glow into Hikaru's room.

"I… I know that maybe now is not the appropriate moment, but…"

"Hm?"

"I want to tell you about Sai."

* * *

_Next chapter:_ How Hikaru tells Akira about Sai, how Ogata-sensei died, and why, and how it all ends. 


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I don't own it 

A/N: Thank you all for your very nice reviews: dragon shadows, rainqin, star, Ametris and xiar! I appreciated them very much!

* * *

Part 2/2

"Sai?" Akira echoed quietly. He was confused.

He heard the cold howling of the snowstorm outside and the warm rustling of Hikaru's mother in the kitchen downstairs.

"Talk", he said in a low, but determined voice.

"First, Hikaru began timidly, "do you believe in ghosts?".

"No." Akira negated.

"So you don't think that Ogata-sensei could become a spirit if he still had some unfinished business left in this world?"

"If Ogata-san had some unfinished business left he wouldn't have committed suicide."

"Ha-ha…" Hikaru chuckled lowly at Akira's completely serious comment. "Well … about Sai…" Hikaru launched into his story.

Soon Akira found himself carried away on his friend's deep and melodious voice, telling him Sai's story in an almost trancelike chant. Akira heard the storm outside calming down, the bed under him creaking softly whenever there was a movement, the sounds of Hikaru's parents going to bed. All the while he stared at the ceiling, and, slowly, as Hikaru talked on, he found his mind building up images of what Sai could have looked like, with his long, black hair, his tall hat, his daunting play-face that Hikaru described and even the childish side he couldn't believe a thousand year old being possessed and in which he was so alike Hikaru.

As Hikaru's voice became increasingly melancholic with the ongoing story, Akira was continuously drawn deeper into the tragic happenings that followed after Hikaru's pro exam. Fascinated and engrossed in the story he felt with Hikaru when his best friend and mentor suddenly disappeared, his strenuous but futile search of him and the painful experience of hoping he would come back if he only stopped playing. And finally the relief when he had been 'allowed' to play again.

Despite his doubts at Hikaru's fantastic story, he couldn't help being fascinated by it. Either Hikaru was a formidable storyteller, what Akira disbelieved, or the story was really true. His rational mind opted for the invented story, but his heart was almost convinced of the second. A sadness like Hikaru's when he talked about Sai could barely be only the product of genial storytelling. A pain like this… a pain so much like his… had to be for real.

If Akira had thought that listening to Hikaru could make him forget his grief, he had been proven untrue. Hikaru's voice and words alone had made him suffer. But it was especially through the similarities between Sai's and Ogata's positions in their respective lives, and through their both untimely, unexpected disappearances, he felt himself being buried under an avalanche of feelings twice as big as if he had only had his own.

In the end he found himself weeping with Hikaru at Sai's disappearance as well as for himself at the renewed anguish of Ogata's loss.

* * *

"_Let's play a game…" Hikaru had said, after all talk had become inane. He stood up and placed his gob an in the middle of the room, where there was still enough light to discern black and white stones._

_Akira, divining what his friend had been aiming at, had answered: "I'm tired and I feel bad… I don't think I can play a game worthy of neither Ogata-san nor Sai-sama."_

"_Don't worry. Of course you will. They'll guide us."_

_Akira had looked up for some time at his friend, as he had waited for him, standing in the middle of his room like a solid shadow. Finally, he had relented. _

_Akira had gotten up from the bed and taken his place in front of the wooden board. Hikaru sat down in the same instant as him. _

_Both had taken a goke, the colour of the stones didn't matter in this game, their eyes locked with each other's, like blinking deeps in shadowy faces. In a simultaneous movement they had opened their bowls, laying the caps beside them on the floor with silently resounding thumps. _

_Akira had bowed in the ancient ritual, but his voice had uttered different words._

"_For Seiji and Sai," he had said. _

_Hikaru had taken a deep breath before answering like a prayer._

"_For Seiji and Sai."_

_Both smiled gently as they placed the first stones, as the played their game… _in memoriam.

* * *

Akira didn't respond to Sai's story. Even though he sensed he sensed in Hikaru's silence the expectation of an answer, a comment, anything, he kept quiet for he wasn't sure at all what he was thinking.

He felt Hikaru starting to twitch uncertainly beside him. Doubtlessly he wondered if Akira believed him. Akira felt every movement of Hikaru through the easing of the bed and because they lay so close to each other on the bed that with every movement their arms touched fleetingly.

The silence was uncomfortable.

"Why did Ogata die?" Hikaru finally asked quietly, almost as if commenting on the weather.

Akira told him, his voice as faraway as his friend's.

Suddenly, after a moment of stunned silence, Hikaru started to cackle helplessly. The noise resounded from the walls, chasing itself like an echo back and forth.

"O-Ogata…Ogata-sensei killed himself," Hikaru pressed out the words between fits of laughter, "because of…of Kuwabara-sensei?"

"Why are you laughing?" Akira demanded, to a certain degree, shocked.

"Because…" Hikaru could barely breathe, only that Akira couldn't help noticing the desperate tinge to his laughter. "Because… because it's just so genially absurd! Hahaha."

Leaning the back of his hand against his brow, Akira closed his eyes and shook his head in disbelieve, He wondered if Hikaru had ultimately gone insane. But, after a while of holding his stomach and seesawing back and forth on the mattress, Hikaru calmed down and Akira opened his eyes again to grant him a look.

"That was not a joke?"

"No, of course it wasn't," Akira frowned in frustration at his friend, who couldn't see the gesture because of the darkness, yet the glint in Akira's eyes wasn't lost to him.

"It sounds like one," Hikaru insisted, "Maybe someone told you the wrong thing?"

"Only I know the real reason… Ogata-san… he left a letter to me… explaining…" Akira ran a hand through his hair, "It was for Kuwabara's fault. For some reason Ogata-san was a lot more susceptible to the old man's speeches than anyone else. I can't explain it otherwise. When I read his letter, his logic seems flawless… but when I think about it… I can't see any reason. But for him… there seemed to be…" Akira baled his fists and continued squeezed his words out through his closed teeth, "I feel as if I had to respect his decision, but I can't help but thinking that what he did was… simply stupid!"

Angry helplessness carried through Akira's voice and every time he thought again about Ogata's letter he found himself more at a loss. He couldn't comprehend Ogata's treachery in leaving him alone because of his selfish reasons. He couldn't comprehend how such an old man had been enough to devastate his proud and conceited friend. He didn't understand anything anymore.

His train of thoughts was interrupted as Hikaru warily asked. "Do you think… it could be… because he felt cheated? Do you think he thought that Kuwabara cheated on him? Only that he found it too embarrassing to admit that he was bothered by his mean words? Did he find his helplessness too shameful, because no one else noticed?"

"Cheated? Kuwabara-sensei would never cheat." If there was something Akira was convinced of, it was the honour of a Go pro.

"Influencing his opponent's state of mind so he loses is not cheating?" Hikaru countered his thoughts.

"…"

"Akira…" Hikaru whispered. "It's not that unheard of… that a great go player killed himself because of a lost game."

"What?"

"Sai… too…" Hikaru hesitated for a breath's time, "Sai too was cheated in a very important game. It was just one piece, a black stone of his accidentally under the white stones of the opponent's. But instead of giving it to Sai, the opponent secretly transferred it into his agehama (captive stones)…"

"What?" Akira propped himself up on an elbow, rightfully shocked at this crime.

"Sai was so disturbed by this cheating…" Hikaru continued in a sad voice, still lying on his back, "He lost. He was chased away and saw no other resort than to drown himself."

Akira couldn't help the sadness mounting in him due to Sai's tragic story. As if it wasn't enough that he had simply vanished, leaving Hikaru all alone…

"So you really believe that Sai has existed?" he asked Hikaru.

"I do", the blond and black haired boy confirmed earnestly in a low voice, "I knew him. I told you."

"It could have been just a story", Akira explained matter-of-factly.

"It isn't."

Hikaru hesitated. "You can believe me… or maybe you don't. I guess it doesn't matter to me anymore. I would understand if you didn't. But still… if you believe me or not… Sai's story is true."

What did he believe?

Akira didn't know any more. If anyone had ever told him that Ogata-san would commit suicide, he wouldn't have believed it. If anyone had told him that the Hikaru that lost so disappointingly to him in the school tournament would catch up to him in merely two years, he wouldn't have believed it. If anyone had told him that Ogata, who additionally to his Judan and Gosei had gained the Kisei and Meijin as well and held for the last years would be beaten by the old Kuwabara-sensei out of the Honinbo due to the sheer meanness of the old man, he wouldn't have believed it. So, now, when Hikaru told him that he had been possessed by the spirit of an ancient Go – player, why actually shouldn't he believe him?

* * *

_It was as if the storm outside had extended a gentle finger of ice cold air inside. Like a breeze it caressed the two boys facing each other over Hikaru's goban. It swirled around them in a playful dance, causing the small hairs all over their bodies to prickle. _

_Hikaru and Akira probably didn't know that Go, the ancient game of Go, had been invented by monks for oracle purposes and, before it had become a game of strategy, it had been a means of conjuring up spirits... _

_So it was nothing more than a hopeful illusion of two sleep-deprived seventeen year old boys, who believed in the breath of icy air to feel the presence of their late teachers. And it was only their desperate imagination that gave them the impression that two translucent ghost forms in the form of their friends were hovering over their heads bent over the goban, gently smiling down on them. _

The quietness drifted around them like a waft, accumulated in the dark corners of the room, but was lightened where they lay only by their breathing.

Suddenly, destroying the silence, Akira asked. "You said that Sai drowned himself?" Seeking confirmation for what he had heard before.

"Yes…" Hikaru said in a pained voice.

Akira was silent again, lost in his thoughts.

"You know what it interesting…?" he asked.

"No…" Hikaru answered.

"Ogata-san did drown himself, too."

"What!"

Even the snowstorm seemed to have calmed down as if it were making sure that everyone heard the shocked silence in the room.

"Yes," Akira confirmed in a calm voice, "The policeman told me he bound a goban to his feet and jumped into the river."

* * *

"Did you ever hear the saying that shared pain is half pain?"

Both laughed bitterly.

"In reality it's the double of it. Having to bear you own and the other's."

It was maybe four o'clock in the morning. "Still… I'm glad…" Hikaru murmured, "I'm glad I finally could share my pain…" he closed his eyes and intertwined his fingers with Akira's in a gentle touch. "I'd rather have the double of it than having to bear it all alone…"


End file.
